Phone has a decent size battery, but battery life will likely be less than ideal

LG Electronics Inc. (KS:066570) has certainly struggled during the smartphone era, which has led to some high-profile executive attrition. But things finally appear to be looking up. The company's smartphone division became profitable in 2011 for the first time in quite a while. And it's finally producing the kind of sleek superphones Android customers are demanding.

The camera packs the expected fare -- an 8 MP rear-facing camera, 1.3 MP front-facing camera, and near field communications for use with Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Wallet app. But the phone's most impressive features are its large 4.7-inch (720x1280) screen and quad-core Tegra 3 chip from NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA). The Tegra 3 is reportedly clocked at 1.5 GHz when motoring in single-core mode, but clocks down to 1.4 GHz when multiple cores are in use.

Depending on when this hits the market, it could be the world's very first quad-core smartphone. The Tegra 3 has thus far only seen action in ASUSTEK Computer Inc.'s (TPE:2357) popular Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

The X3 will pack a relatively heavy-duty 2,000 mAh battery -- which seemingly further tempts fate. The 4.7-inch diagonal screen (4.10-in x 2.30-in -- or roughly 9.43 sq. in), gives the X3 a power per screen area ratio of approximately 212.1 mAh per sq in.

To put this perspective, the iPhone 4S -- which generally has pretty decent battery life -- packs a 1,432 mAh battery [source] with a 3.5-inch diagonal screen (2.91-in. x 1.94-in. -- or roughly 5.7 sq. in). This works out to roughly 251.2 mAh per sq. in.

Now consider that both the iPhone 4S and the X3 use LG's "Retina" displays (so their power per inch would likely be similar) and the iPhone 4S only has a dual-core CPU clocked at 800 MHz (~43% lower).

To give one more point of comparison, HTC Corp.'s (TPE:2498) Rezound has a 4.3-inch diagonal screen (3.75-in x 2.11-in -- or roughly 7.9 sq. in) and a 1,620 mAh batter, which works out to 205.1 mAh per sq. in. But the Rezound only has a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor.

A leaked render of the LG X3 [Image Source: Pocket Now]

It's easy to speculate that the battery life will be relatively bad, but given the low mAh per square inch of competitive Android models, it may just be your typical short-lived Android fodder.

So far the handset has not been officially announced, so price, carrier availability, launch date, and finalized specs have not yet been committed to public knowledge.

LG recently drew attention for its launch of the Prada 3. Some may recall that the Prada beat the iPhone to market in 2007, and was remarkably similar to Apple's handset in the overall GUI experience, and was the first mobile phone to have a capacitive touchscreen. LG released a follow-up -- the Prada II -- in Dec. 2008, but the model did not see great sales success. The new Prada 3 ditches the physical keyboard for a sleek form factor, which somewhat resembles Nokia Oyj.'s (HEL:NOK1V) Lumia 900 Windows Phone.